Gifting Bad – First in a Three-Part Series

Each day here at Leading Edge Gifts, our team of gift-assisting experts works to help our customers deliver awesome, creative, unique, and meaningful gifts to lucky recipients. Through this process, Customers often share with us their excitement about giving their new-found gift. Occasionally, they also share with us some funny, sad, or just wrong “gifting bad” type of experiences they’ve had in the past. From the bad Boss’s Day gifts, “ill-thought out” anniversary gifts, to questionable Christmas and birthday gifts – we’ve heard quite a few stories over the years. So for fun, we thought we’d share some of the more notable stories here with you. We’ll be breaking it down into a three-part series. Please feel free to share some of your “gifting bad” experiences in the comments below.

First, let’s start with Nancy’s* story. She and her coworkers were working on a caricature for their Boss’s Day Gift. She was over-the-top excited about the gift. As it turned out, they needed to make up for the gift they gave the previous year. It seems that the year prior, their boss Ted* was relatively new to their department. He was brought in to replace someone who was well-loved, respected, and had been with the company for many years. They liked Ted, but they were still in the process of really getting to know him. They gleaned from a conversation they overheard that his favorite team was the Giants. Perfect. They decided to get a sports-themed gift: personalized jersey, team hat, etc… On the big day, they presented Ted with his gift. What Nancy and her coworkers didn’t know about Ted was that he grew up on the West Coast. His animated conversation about the Giants? He was talking about the San Francisco Giants. Baseball. Their gift? NY Giants jersey and cap. NY Giants, the football team. Nancy said she thought to herself, “Well, at least it was a baseball cap, I suppose.” Strike 1 for their gift. Nervous and having realized the full measure of their mistake, and trying to put a positive spin on it, one of Nancy’s coworkers pointed out that at least the cap could still come in handy. He could use it to protect his head from the sun. As it turns out, Ted was also very self-conscious of his very noticeably receding hairline. Yipes. Strike 2. A brief awkward silence fell over the group. Fortunately, Ted laughed it off, saving them from a “Strike 3″ moment. He made a quick joke about how blue looked better on him anyway and then wore his new jersey and hat for the rest of the day. For this Boss’s day gift, Nancy and her group already had plans for hitting a home run with their caricature – even to include a NY Giants jersey in the artwork as a light-hearted nod to their previous year’s “gifting bad” moment.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent… and the not-so-innocent.